Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Defense Tech: Cyber Sabatoge

Cyber Sabotage is yet another new wrinkle in the emerging threats from cyber space. Whether delivered over the internet or purposefully installed during the manufacturing process, contaminated hardware or software is now a concern. Sabotage is defined as deliberate and malicious acts that result in the disruption of the normal processes and functions or the destruction or damage of equipment or information.

The Department of Defense operates and estimated 3.5 million PCs and 100,000 local-area networks at 1,500 sites in 65 countries. In one study a common piece of network equipment sold by a US company was found to have nearly 70 percent of the components produced by foreign suppliers. This equipment is critical to our security as well as our economy. If we cannot trust the computer equipment out of the box, then where are we? At this point it would be impractical to validate each and every computer before we place it into operations.